Announcement chime

[YOLO]

Does anyone have a copy of the announcement chime that WMATA uses to announce last-train announcements at stations, service delays, etc?

It's not the ding ding sound you hear for elevator outages and such (I believe that sound might have come from Windows 95 or something).

[MCL1981]

I've never heard anything other than the Windows 3.1 Ding Ding sound. Which speaks volumes to their announcement systems...

[YOLO]

It's a special chime you hear when someone makes an unscheduled announcement. Typically you hear it at night when they do the last train announcements, or maybe even unscheduled single tracking.

[schmod]

I doubt it's actually the Windows 3.1 ding. It's a chime, but it sounds fairly unique (and has more reverb).

I don't have a copy of the other chime, but I know what you're talking about. It's musical, and sounds distinct enough that you pay attention to it when you hear it (which is good, because it's meant to be used for urgent, station-specific announcements). The fact that you don't hear it often is probably deliberate.

(FWIW, I think that Metro's PA system is actually pretty good, especially considering the acoustics that they have to work with.)

[MCL1981]

I'm in Gallery and Union daily. Their announcements are completely unintelligible.

[Sand Box John]

"schmod"
(FWIW, I think that Metro's PA system is actually pretty good, especially considering the acoustics that they have to work with.)

The acoustics in a Metrorail station are nearly equivalent to a concert hall. WMATA hired acoustical engineers early on to figure out how much acoustical dampening was needed to achieve that goal. Cody Phanstiehl invited the Washington Coral Society to sing in Metro Center around Christmas several times to demonstrate that the acoustical quality was equivalent to a concert hall.

"MCL1981"
I'm in Gallery and Union daily. Their announcements are completely unintelligible.

It's unintelligible because the person behind the microphone doesn't know how to speak into said microphone.

[MCL1981]

It's unintelligible because the person behind the microphone doesn't know how to speak into said microphone.

The pre-recorded announcements are just as bad as the live announcements. I suppose every single person speaking into a microphone could be ignorant of their proper operation. But lately it seems like the volume it just cranked up way too loud.

[amtrakhogger]

IIRC, weren't the door chimes of old (early 80's) an actual recording of a piano?